The Call of Nodlehs
by gsxdoug
Summary: The TBBT gang becomes embroiled in an adventure of cosmic proportions. AU but IC with a dash of Lovecraft.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N; I had been thinking about this story for some time, and Sheldon's departure at the end of season 7 offered a nice jumping-off point. It's a bit different from my other stories; more adventure, less romance. It will still feature the canon couples doing the things that couples do, but in a different context. Although this prologue is angsty and the story is kind of AU, I still plan on peppering it with humor and keeping everyone IC as much as possible. Updates will probably be less frequent than in the past, but we'll see how it goes. I own nothing of TBBT or the Cthulhu Mythos (a rather unsubtle hint about where this is going).**

Dr. Leonard Hofstadter looked around at his companions as they huddled to the rear of the military transport plane that was taking them back to the mainland. The group had been through a lot in the past weeks, and it showed in the fatigue and recently remembered horror on their faces. His fiancée, Penny, clung tightly to his right arm, her face dirty, her long blonde hair tangled and disheveled. Leonard still thought she looked beautiful, in spite of it all. Howard Wolowitz and his petite blonde firecracker of a wife, Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz sat beside them on the left, holding each other and whispering together; a private conversation between two lovers who were only recently pulled from the brink of despair. Leonard politely tuned them out. Poor Raj, Rajesh Koothrapali, astrophysicist, sat opposite them, typically alone, his eyes downcast. Emily, the woman he had been seeing recently, had opted not to join them on this venture. Beside him, but with a small space between them sat Amy Farrah Fowler, her eyes still red from the tears she had shed for her loss. Where their seventh companion Dr. Sheldon Cooper was, Leonard was not quite sure.

The chain of events that had brought them to this juncture replayed themselves in Leonard's mind. It all started after Sheldon, Leonard's roommate and friend, had left Pasadena by train at the start of the summer when his neat, predictable world had come crashing down around him. Recent changes to the status quo, in part precipitated by Leonard and Penny's engagement and culminating in a fire at Stuart's comic book store (usually a sanctuary to which Sheldon could retreat in search of comfort in the face of chaos) had sent Sheldon on a pilgrimage to quell his inner turmoil. Although when he first left Sheldon had been calling Amy every day to keep her and his friends updated, communication had, in the last week or so, fallen off to a trickle of text messages giving his whereabouts but little more. So it came as a surprise to Leonard when he was awoken in the middle of the night by the incessant buzzing of his cell phone.


	2. Chapter 2

In the darkness of his bedroom in Apartment 4A, 2311 North Los Robles Avenue, Leonard frantically groped for his  
ringing cell phone to shut off the evil laughter emanating from it before it woke Penny, who was snoring gently beside him. Not for the first time, he questioned the wisdom of purchasing that particular ring tone. Looking at the caller ID, Leonard rolled his eyes. Of course it was Sheldon! He briefly considered letting it go to voice mail but, remembering a recent pummeling with a pillow at the hands of Amy, decided to answer in case Sheldon was in need of a way to return home to Pasadena. Leonard pulled on his robe and, with a brief glance to be sure Penny was still blissfully snoring away, headed to the kitchen to take the call.

"Hello Sheldon," Leonard said resignedly, cradling the phone on his shoulder as he went into the fridge to retrieve a carton of orange juice.

"Greetings, Leonard," Sheldon replied. "My you sound somewhat surly this morning."

"Morning? It's three o'clock!"

"Three o'clock am, which as you are well aware stands for _ante meridiem_. _Ante meridiem_ is from the Latin for before midday, which is the very definition of-"

"What do you want, Sheldon," Leonard said in exasperation.

"-Morning," Sheldon finished. His pedantry and need for completion was oddly reassuring to Leonard. This was still the Sheldon he had known for years. "I would like to request your assistance in a matter of some import."

As Leonard poured a glass of juice, he considered Sheldon's statement. It was his thinking that what might be a "matter of some import" to Sheldon wouldn't necessarily be all that important to him, or just about anybody else on the planet. He decided to go for the obvious. "Do you need a ride home from some abandoned railway station because you drove the train staff to throwing you off?"

"Why would you think that? You know very well what charming company I can be. No, the matter of which I speak is of a scientific nature and may have far-reaching implications for our present understanding of the laws of physics, indeed of the very fabric of the universe as we know it."

Although Leonard was quite familiar with his friend's tendency for pompous hyperbole, in his defense he was just recently awakened from a rather pleasant post-coitus slumber at three o'clock _ante meridiem_. Without thinking, he asked, "And what would that be?"

"I believe," Sheldon replied solemnly, "That I may have stumbled upon a method to open a portal to another dimension."

**A/N; The chapters may get longer. Right now I'm just liking the pauses for dramatic effect.**


	3. Chapter 3

Leonard spat out a mouthful of orange juice. He was now reconsidering his earlier diagnosis. Apparently Sheldon had bought a one-way ticket to crazy-ville after he and Penny had left him at the train station.

"Wait, what?" Leonard sputtered.

"I have come into possession of a journal which, among other things, contains some rather interesting mathematical formulae," Sheldon replied.

"Did you find it under your seat?"

"No," Sheldon replied indignantly. "It was given to me by a man I met while riding the rails."

"Who, that guy you met on Valentine's Day?"

As usual, Leonard's sarcasm went right by Sheldon. "No, this was an older gentleman, dressed in a very dapper, if somewhat outdated suit. He claimed the journal was passed on to him by his father who coincidentally disappeared shortly thereafter. He was oddly concerned about the use of angles in the design of the train car we were on, which made him seem a little, um-"

"Eccentric?" Leonard supplied.

"Yes, that's it. Come to think of it, since you mentioned Eric, I've noticed of late that the railway seems to act almost as a magnet to eccentric types."

"Why am I not surprised?" Leonard asked rhetorically.

"Only you can answer that," Sheldon replied, missing that one as well. "In any event, if you are done taking us off on a tangent, may I continue?"

"If you must," Leonard sighed.

"Thank you," Sheldon replied. "I spent many hours reading and rereading the aforementioned formulae and after applying advances in modern physics as well as my own prodigious intellect I arrived at the conclusion that we could very possibly use the information contained therein to open a portal into another universe.

Leonard resisted the urge to tell Sheldon how much he wished said portal had already been opened and his friend had gone through. Instead he said, "That's all very interesting, if true. But it doesn't explain why you felt the need to wake me up at three in the morning."

"Why, to enlist your aid of course. As an experimental physicist you have access to, and knowledge in the use of various detectors and other equipment that I believe will be needed to enable us to open the way, as it were."

"So, what are you proposing?" Leonard asked warily.

"That you join myself, Howard Wolowitz, and Rajesh Koothrapalli on an expedition."

Leonard sat quietly thinking for a few minutes before speaking. "Okay, I have some questions. An expedition to where, exactly? And why Raj and Howard?"

"As I believe I implied, the journal contained other information apart from the formulae I mentioned. This included schematics for a device to facilitate our experiment, which I hope Wolowitz can redesign and build using 21st Century components," Sheldon said. "As for the other aspects of your inquiry, they go together. Also included were a number of astronomical charts, which indicate the optimal time and location that this portal opening should be attempted based on, I believe, the positions of particular celestial bodies in conjunction with the location of certain gravitational anomalies in Earth's planetary crust. I cannot be more specific without Raj's expertise in such matters."

Leonard considered this. "Okay, one more question. Do you recall the aftermath of our expedition to the Arctic?"

"I do, and I promise to make every endeavor to prevent such an outcome from recurring."

Despite the patent absurdity of it all, Leonard found himself intrigued by the proposition Sheldon had laid before him. Of course there was no way he was leaving Penny for an extended period of time at this juncture in their relationship, but it wouldn't hurt to look over Sheldon's discovery.

"I assume you scanned the journal onto your laptop?" he asked.

"I did," was Sheldon's reply.

"Okay, send it along."

**A/N; Sorry if this is a little "talky." Still setting things up.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: At this point, I own nothing.**

Penny woke up that morning (as Sheldon would tell you, 11:55 am is still morning) to an empty bed. Getting up and stretching lazily, she made use of the bathroom and went in search of coffee and her fiancé. Penny found Leonard in the living room at his computer, scrolling madly back and forth through page after page of something she found totally incomprehensible. Beside him was a pad of paper in which he had scribbled copious equations and notes, also beyond her understanding. Beside that there was a cup of coffee, long forgotten and cold. Shaking her head, Penny decided to make herself a coffee before she'd feel up to asking about what nerdy obsession could possibly be so interesting that one would drag oneself out of bed before noon on a Saturday, especially after the amorous activities the pair had indulged in the night before.

"Want a fresh cup?" she asked, taking Leonard's untouched mug and heading for the kitchen. Receiving only a non-committal grunt in reply, Penny shook her head and proceeded to make two cups anyway. "So, whatcha doin', sweetie?" she asked in a singsong voice as she poured the coffee. Not getting an answer, Penny looked up to see that Leonard was sill reading and scribbling away, stopping only to crumple up a sheet of paper from the notepad beside him and toss it haphazardly (and very inaccurately) at the nearby waste bin. Letting out a forlorn sigh, Penny brought the steaming mugs over and set one back down on Leonard's desk.

"What on Earth is so important that you can't take two seconds to say good morning to your future wife?" she asked, standing very close to him and brushing lightly against him with her hip. Her hair was still disheveled from the previous evening's romp and she hadn't put a robe on over her latest, revealing Victoria's Secret purchase. How could he possibly continue to ignore her now?

"Hmm," Leonard replied still looking at the computer screen and seemingly oblivious to the conversation Penny was trying to have with him.

Penny was now going from mildly annoyed to verging on angry. "Leonard!" she said loudly.

"What?" Leonard said, finally tearing himself from the screen. "Oh, hi honey! What time is it? Have you been up long? How about putting on a pot of coffee?"

"Argh!" Penny exclaimed in frustration before going over to flop down on the couch, at the end opposite Sheldon's spot. She sat and glared at Leonard over the rim of her mug. The object of her ire looked from her to his computer screen and back a few times as if torn between his obsession for the data Sheldon had sent and his love for her before finally making a choice.

"I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to ignore you, it's just these papers Sheldon sent this morning are so fascinating I just couldn't tear myself away."

Why was she not surprised, Penny thought to herself, that Sheldon, where ever he was, had managed to come between her and Leonard even from a distance. "This morning?" she asked, puzzled. "When this morning?"

"About three-thirty or so, after we spoke for a time on the phone."

"And you've been up this whole time?" Penny asked, rolling her eyes. "What is it, the script for the next Hobbit movie?"

"Yeah, I wish! Um," he continued, seeing Penny's glare returning. "It's kind of a science paper, but not from an actual scientist. More of a journal, actually. But not a scientific journal, more like a diary..." he trailed off, sensing Penny's oncoming boredom. "Anyway, Sheldon wants me to go on an expedition with him, as well as Raj and Howard, to, um, explore certain aspects of the journal."

"Oh no," Penny said, sitting upright and giving Leonard her full attention. "There's no way your going off with Dr. Whackadoodle to some godforsaken place and leaving me here alone for months again, especially not now after we just got engaged. Nope, not happening!"

* * *

A similar scene had played out at the Wolowitz home, Bernadette even going so far as to claim pregnancy with multiple births in the offing before she could coax Howard away from scanning the diagrams Sheldon had emailed him after calling at four in the morning. Bernadette's response was much the same as Penny's, she having experienced the beginning of her married life as a "space widow."

Raj was the lucky one, not being woken by Sheldon's call until well after five a.m. and not having a wife or fianceé to be responsible to. In fact, when they met for brunch later that morning Emily, the girl he was currently seeing, was quite supportive. Of course she didn't have as much of a stake in the relationship at this stage as the other two women, and she'd had only a small dose of Sheldon so had no idea what Raj might be getting into.

**A/N; By this point you're probably starting to wonder how the girls wind up on this little adventure. I'm getting there, I promise. **

**PS; Just made a small edit for show continuity.  
**


	5. Chapter 5

Penny and Bernadette were sitting in their favorite bar, with Emily on the stool between them for her first night out with the girls. Amy was running late and had yet to arrive.

"It was really cool for of you guys to invite me out," Emily was saying. "Even though I've only been seeing Raj for a short time, I think I'm going to miss him when he goes on that expedition with Amy's boyfriend. I can't imagine how the two of you feel about your guys going."

Penny and Bernadette exchanged looks. "Well," Bernadette began.

"The thing of it is," Penny started to add.

"They're not going?" Emily asked in surprise. "From what Raj says, this could be the scientific discovery of the century."

"But Leonard went away last summer, and we just got engaged!" Penny said defensively. "Besides, some of the stuff Leonard showed me from that journal creeped me out a little."

"All Howie got was blueprints for a device so I don't know about that," Bernadette said. Turning to Emily, she explained, "Howard went into space right after we got married. We didn't even get a real honeymoon. I want him here with me, not off to God knows where."

Emily looked thoughtful. "Raj did say the location for the experiment was just off some tropical island. You could go too, kind of a working honeymoon."

"I like the way you think!" Bernadette said as she searched her purse for her cell phone.

"A tropical island vacation, that's something I could go for! Penny said as she dug out her own phone. "I wonder if Sheldon told Amy about all this," Penny added. She almost threw her phone in the air when a voice beside her spoke.

"Told Amy about what?"

Penny put her hand over her heart. "Jeez Amy, you nearly scared the life out of me. Don't do that!" she complained to her friend who had come up silently behind her.

"I offer my sincerest apologies, bestie," Amy replied, "But I must ask again what it is you were referring to."

After taking a sip of her wine, Penny proceeded to bring Amy up to speed on the week's events.

* * *

"So," Sheldon's voice intoned from Leonard's laptop where it was set on the coffee table in apartment 4A. "What sort of progress have we made?"

Raj, who was seated in the middle of the couch, leaned forward eagerly and rubbed his hands together. "By running a simulation backward through time, I was able to pinpoint the location of the gravitational anomaly indicated by the star charts you sent me. I must say, the time-frame involved was surprisingly immense. Orders of magnitude greater than I can comfortably account for."

"As long as you are sure the results are reliable," Sheldon said dismissively. "And the time?"

"It seems that all that is required is that the moon be at apogee and full. What some refer to as a "super moon." I believe there is more than one this summer so I think August 10th may be our best shot."

Sheldon nodded in grudging approval. "Alright, Howard?"

"No problem building the thing," Howard answered from where he sat on the arm of the couch. "But don't ask me how it's supposed to work. It makes no sense to me at all."

"I'm sure those of us with actual doctorates will manage. Leonard?"

Leonard came over from the kitchen with a bottle of water and sat down in his armchair. "I've drawn up a list of equipment that will be the both useful and portable. I can have them shipped to wherever you need them with minimal fuss."

"What do you mean have them shipped? Are you not joining me?"

"No," Leonard replied. "Penny-"

"Oh, _Penny_. It's always Penny with you," Sheldon said in exasperation.

"Well she is my fiancée and-"

"Raj or Howard do either of you have that app that makes a whipping sound handy," Sheldon interrupted. "If so, I believe now would be an appropriate time to employ it."

"Actually, I'm not going either," Howard said.

"Please don't tell me that the fate of my Nobel Prize rests in the hands of a practitioner of the squishy sciences and _Penny_."

Leonard was about to defend his future wife when his phone chimed to announce an incoming text from Penny herself, almost simultaneously with the buzzing of Howard's phone. Both men read the messages just received before exchanging a defeated look.

"Looks like we're going after all," Leonard said to Sheldon as Howard nodded.

"Oh, goody!" Sheldon said with his usual hideous grin.

"Yeah, I wouldn't get too excited if I were you. The girls are coming too," Leonard told him.

"The Horror!" Sheldon said in a faint voice.

"And that includes Amy," Leonard finished. For once Sheldon was absolutely speechless.

**A/N; Contrived? Maybe, but considering the nature of this story, I think I can get away with it. Also, sorry for the later than usual update. Just wasn't in a writing mood for a while. Oh, and don't quote me on the astronomy stuff.**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N; Took a while to get this one out even though its short. Contains a few more hints about the journal.**

The little group of friend's flight to their Pacific island destination and expedition launch point was relatively uneventful. Sheldon had flown out earlier to charter water transportation to the site of their experiment. This also made the trip fairly quiet, allowing each member of the group plenty of opportunity for introspection.

Amy was somewhat put out when Sheldon had left earlier that spring without telling her but had eventually come to understand his reasoning. She was now very upset as this was the second occasion in recent months that he had chosen not to confide in her, this time about the journal and the expedition he had lured them all into. She was determined to confront him with her concerns.

Howard had become better friends with Sheldon over the weeks prior to his leaving, but was leery of working with him again based on previous experience. However he was fascinated to see if the device he had built for Sheldon actually worked, and exactly what it did. Still, in the back of his mind, he was itemizing the tools that they were bringing with them in case it became necessary to improvise a weapon that would put Sheldon out of their misery. Beside him, Bernadette just watched the sea- and cloudscape pass by the airplane window, content that she and Howard were finally getting the honeymoon they had missed out on due to his space mission.

For his part, Raj was thinking about the fame that a positive outcome to their endeavor would bring, imagining himself with a supermodel on each arm. He then thought about his budding relationship with Emily, but quickly decided she'd be okay with it. After all, she seemed understanding when he thought he'd be seeing her and Lucy at the same time, right?

Leonard didn't really want to go on another expedition with or without Sheldon and not wanting to be parted from his future bride gave him a very good reason to avoid it, which Penny herself had unexpectedly negated. But he was nonetheless fascinated by the unlikely possibility of the experiment working, while remaining skeptical of it's success.

As Penny sat dozing with her head on his shoulder, she daydreamed of coaxing Leonard into having sex in the ocean or on the beach under cover of night. These pleasurable thoughts were interspersed with less than pleasant recollections of the things she had seen while browsing through the scanned pages of the journal Sheldon had inherited. There were pictures of an ancient tome with an ominous brown stain obscuring the title and author so that all that could be made out were the first and last few letters; Ne...something...ron by Abdul something-or-other. It sort of reminded her of script covers for one of her favorite sitcoms that were posted on spoiler websites with a strategically positioned pencil, but not in a good way. Then there were the little drawings of loathsome squid-like creatures, and formless blobs with a disturbing number and placement of eyes that seemed to be associated with the nonsense word "shoggoth." Penny shivered at these thoughts and snuggled closer to Leonard, seeking the comfort of human warmth. She drifted off into a fitful sleep until being awakened by Leonard telling her they had arrived.

* * *

After a few days spent enjoying their tropical island getaway, the group boarded the small ship Sheldon had secured for them. The term ship, Leonard thought based on his North Sea experience, was being charitable. It was fairly cramped quarters for the seven of them and their equipment and its seaworthiness was questionable. The crew didn't inspire much faith, either, consisting of a rather overweight captain and a skinny, clumsy first mate that reminded Leonard uncomfortably of a vaguely remembered TV show from days gone by. Amy, however, was quick to bond with the small monkey that was the ship's mascot.

They were about three hours out and nearing the coordinates of their destination when the storm came up out of nowhere. The sky had been clear and sunny right up until then and there was absolutely no warning. The tiny ship was hammered by the force of wind and waves that seemed impelled with malicious intent.


	7. Chapter 7

**Finally a new chapter. Sorry for the delay, sometimes life gets in the way. I hope the tone of the story feels the **  
**same after not having worked on it for so long. Thanks for your patience.**

The intrepid group found itself run aground in the eye of the storm on a black, slimy few acres of rock that one would be hard put to call an island. The storm itself seemed to form a dark, impenetrable wall around them as they gathered together beside their broken ship. The girls, who were taking advantage of the day's last couple hours of sunshine, had been caught topside when the storm hit. They were left cold, soaked and bedraggled with the evening coming on. The guys had fared better, being below decks calibrating equipment and arguing over the casting of the next Star Wars movie. Despite some bumps and bruising they were at least dry. The seven friends along with the Captain and First Mate huddled in a small circle to discuss their predicament.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Penny said as a shiver ran through her. Leonard, realizing her discomfort, quickly took off his hoodie and wrapped it around her shoulders. She gave him a grateful smile as he rubbed her arms to warm her.

"I don't know," Raj said, "All the weather services I consulted showed nothing but clear blue tropical skies for miles." Penny glared in his direction, thinking maybe she'd found someone to blame for her misery. Raj was saved from bearing the brunt of her anger by the ship's captain, who chose that moment to speak.

"The weather at sea can be unpredictable, but I admit that storm was very unprecedented," the captain said. "But be that as it may, now we have to deal with the situation at hand."

"And how are we going to deal with it?" Amy inquired from her place in the circle. The ship's mascot clung tightly to his new friend, the little monkey looking even worse than the women with his fur soaked and sticking up all over in clumps.

"Well, the radio sustained some damage, not that we'd be able to get a signal through that," the captain said, waving a hand at the ominous cloud bank surrounding them. "But our emergency beacon and GPS locator are working fine. However it may be some hours before we are rescued, what with the storm and all. In the meantime we can start a fire with some of the flammable items on the ship to warm up and dry you ladies off." He nodded to the first mate who responded with a quick "Aye Cap'n" and went to carry out his boss's wishes.

Leonard now took note that his roommate had been uncharacteristically silent during the exchange and moved closer to speak to him, while keeping his arm around his fiancée.

"Hey, buddy! Are you doing okay?"

"No, Leonard, I am not. I have staked quite a lot on the outcome of this expedition," Sheldon replied. "Now we are stuck here on this godforsaken rock awaiting rescue."

"Well, you could try again on the next super moon," Amy piped in, trying to sound encouraging. He just looked at her forlornly.

Raj, who had been studying the handheld GPS he had brought for the trip and glancing up at the few stars that could be seen through the small patch of open sky directly above, hurried over. "Or we can still conduct the experiment tonight," he offered. "By my calculations we are pretty much at the location we need to be." Sheldon looked up hopefully and sent an inquiring glance Howard's way.

The small engineer nodded to himself. "The device is still intact, and I believe some of Leonard's instruments are in working order. We could certainly give it a go."

Sheldon perked up after hearing this, and the guys headed to the ship to offload whatever equipment was still in working order as the girls huddled around the small fire the first mate had gotten started.


	8. Chapter 8

**Another chapter. Maybe now that I've gotten back into it perhaps the updates will become more frequent, or not. Some Shamy stuff in this one. I know of one reader in particular that was asking for more. Reviews are appreciated but not essential.**

As the guys hauled their detection equipment and THE DEVICE, as Howard now ominously referred to it as, to the approximate center of the island, Leonard examined the stony surface under their feet. There were markings there; apparently ancient carvings worn down by water and a seemingly immense passage of time as well as relatively recent etchings added over top of them. Some of the carvings were familiar to him from his reading of the journal Sheldon had been given, indecipherable symbols mixed with odd representations of things that might be animals, which to the best of Leonard's knowledge did not exist. Predominate among these were the same amorphous blobs with the oddly numbered and disturbingly distributed eyes that he had seen in doodled in the margins of the journal, usually surrounding or associated with a cephalopod-like representation which Leonard deemed especially abhorrent. As for the more recent scratches, many of them he recognized from his father's work as an anthropologist and seemed to consist mainly of warning signs and magical protection symbols used on some of the local islands at one time or another.

"Some really weird stuff, huh," Penny said from beside him, startling Leonard out of his contemplation. He hadn't realized how long he'd been staring at the ground. Penny was still wrapped in his hoodie and had put on some over-sized grey track pants, probably borrowed from the first mate.

"Why aren't you over by the fire?" Leonard asked, concerned for his fiancée's well being.

"I'm good," she replied, "Besides, you know how much I love to watch you work," she added with a leer as she brushed up against him.

"Um," Leonard gulped, "I'm not sure this is the best time..." Penny just laughed and gave him a little push before heading over to the staging area for the experiment.

* * *

Amy, the ship's mascot still in her arms, caught up with Sheldon as he clambered out of the ship with the journals which had set their little expedition in motion. She was determined to get some explanations from him and there was no place that he could retreat to on this barren rock.

"Sheldon, I am very disappointed with your actions towards me of late," she started.

"Not now please, Amy," Sheldon immediately interrupted. "Our very basic assumptions about the universe are soon to be tested."

"Yes, now!" Amy insisted, shifting her simian friend from one hip to the other. "It was bad enough that you left Pasadena without so much as a good-bye, although I believe I understand your reasons and am willing to let it pass. What I would like to know now is why you felt that you were unable to confide in me about your journal and this expedition." The monkey on her hip glared at Sheldon as if in sympathy for the woman he had seemingly formed a bond with.

"I suppose you'll want the truth."

"Of course."

"Very well," Sheldon sighed. "Everything about this expedition and our attempt to open an inter-dimensional portal is based on the writings and research of a stranger I chanced to meet up with on a train. None of it is verified or peer-reviewed. For all I really know it is all just an insane delusion of a mad man. But the math seemed so eloquent and meshed so well with many of my musings on String Theory that I felt compelled to try. It may end up as nothing but a wild goose chase, and I didn't want you to see me as a failure."

"Oh," Amy was at a loss for words.

"If that has calmed your unease, may we proceed with this?"

"Um, yes, by all means," Amy said, the corners of her mouth turning up a bit in a small smile. "Let us see this through."


	9. Chapter 9

**The (probably) penultimate chapter. I hope this was worth the build-up. And don't forget, I did use "Supernatural" ****as a tag.**

The little group of scientists (and Penny) now gathered together at the staging area near the center of the rock island. Leonard and Howard worked at hooking up power cables to Leonard's detection equipment and to The Device itself. Upon completing that task they joined the others in examining the strange device Howard had jury-rigged. It was indeed an odd affair, combining modern circuit boards wired to banks of old radio tubes and having a parabolic antenna pointing out one end.

"I still don't know how this is going to work," Howard said to the group, "And there's this slot here that the instructions were very specific on having but I have no idea what would go there," he finished, pointing to a block of aluminum with wires coming out each end and a hexagonal shaped space machined in to the middle.

"Oh yes," Sheldon said, producing something from his pocket. "The stranger gave me this along with the journal." He held up some sort of talisman in the same shape as the slot and having protruberances that matched holes machined into the aluminum hole. Embossed on the face of it was the same cephalopod motif that could be seen whenever one looked beneath their feet at the stone surface of the island. Sheldon stepped over to The Device and inserted it gingerly into it's designated spot. They all just stood looking at it for a moment as nothing happened.

"Now what?" Bernadette asked in her high voice, looking from Howard to Sheldon.

"I guess we just turn the power on," Howard shrugged. He then gestured to Sheldon. "Did you want to make a speech," he asked the lanky physicist, "Something about what a momentous occasion in the annals of physics this is, or how the world will be thanking you for this enormous contribution to our understanding of the universe?"

Sheldon just stared at him blankly for a moment, perhaps trying to decide if the engineer was being sincere or merely sarcastic. "No," he said at last, "I think the speeches would be better saved for when we go public, assuming this even works at all." Now that it had come down to it, Sheldon was having a moment of self-doubt.

Howard shrugged once more, reached over and casually threw the old-fashioned knife switch. A low electrical hum could be heard coming from The Device and some indicator LED's that Howard had incorporated into the design winked on and off in various colors-other than that, nothing.

"Maybe we need more power?" Leonard suggested with a raised eyebrow. Howard turned to the small control panel beside the machine and, selecting a dial, began to turn it up. As the power being fed into the machine increased, the radio tubes began to glow and everyone thought they noticed a different feeling to the atmosphere surrounding them, like the air feels just before a thunder storm, but other than that there was no sign that any inter-dimensional portal was on the verge of opening.

Everybody looked to Sheldon who was now leafing through the journal in search of a section he had read when he first obtained it. "Wait, wait, I believe there was some sort of passage that one needs to recite."

"Really? What, like some sort of magic spell?" Leonard scoffed. Penny narrowed her eyes at him, as she believed such things as psychics and astrology were real.

"No, I believe it to be more like Harold Shea's syllogismobile from *The Compleat Enchanter," Sheldon replied as he ran his finger down the page he had stopped at.

"What," sneered Howard, "You're going to chance what is supposedly the greatest scientific discovery ever in the history of mankind on a fantasy novel? Can't wait to see the peer-review on that! I think this obsession has made you lose all touch with reality."

Sheldon chose to ignore Howard's outburst, instead concentrating on pronouncing the strange syllables on the page before him.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Sheldon spoke tentatively. The storm seemed to become still around them.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Sheldon said again, this time with more confidence. The Moon shining through the empty patch of sky directly above took on a sickly hue.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Sheldon intoned a third time, in a voice not quite his own. The air a few yards ahead of The Device's parabolic antenna became distorted and the watchers thought they could discern alien stars as though seen through a veil.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," boomed a voice that was definitely not Sheldon's and through the spatial distortion the group of friends could see what appeared to be an ancient stone city gated with black basalt pillars topped by repellant statues. And between those pillars towered an eldritch horror, with a squid-like head and enormous bat-like wings, all wrapped in shadow. From the portal there now emanated a smell, a stench of death and decay and as the figure took a stride forward all were rooted to where they stood, transfixed at the vision of horror they were about to unleash on an unsuspecting Earth.

* * *

*By L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. Quite funny and well worth the read.


	10. Chapter 10

**The final chapter! Thanks for reading and your patience with the delay. I hope I got all the loose ends tied up. Just to reiterate, I own nothing of TBBT or the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Oh and, um, sorry about the monkey.**

"Holy crap-on-a-cracker!" Penny breathed, her eyes wide and her hand instinctively searching out Leonard's.

"Sheldon, what have you done?" Bernadette exclaimed in her most strident voice.

"That's it," Raj deadpanned, "Stick a fork in us, we're done."

Everyone stood frozen in their spots, holding their collective breathe as they awaited the inevitable.

Everyone stood frozen, that is, except one little monkey. He leaped from Amy's arms, and running on pure animal instinct, jumped onto The Device to rip the talisman from its place. With it's channeling mechanism removed, The Device abruptly ceased to function. Now the distorted section of space began to collapse in upon itself. The city, with its horrific denizen, started to withdraw into the starry background of the portal. There was a howl of  
outrage as the figure on the other side of the portal desperately reached out with its many-tentacled arms towards the kingdom that was about to be denied it yet again.

Of course, it goes without saying that the indiscriminate opening and closing of inter-dimensional vortices can have consequences other than just the unleashing of unspeakable horrors from beyond. As the vortex spiraled down towards collapse it acted as a small gravitational sink. Anything that was loose in the nearby area began to be drawn in towards it, including all of Sheldon's journals, along with one heroic ship's mascot and the small hexagon of exotic matter it clutched in its tiny paws.

The air, which had been preternaturally still since the infernal machine had been powered up, now came alive once more. The wind lashed and the rain came hard as the storm returned and the surrounding atmosphere was sucked in towards the singularity. The group of friends clung desperately to the heavier bits of Leonard's detection equipment and each other. As the monkey slide screeching by, Amy let go of her anchor in an ill-thought attempt to save him but there was nothing she could do as the poor creature was drawn through the rapidly diminishing portal. She herself would have been drawn in as well if a hand had not reached out and grabbed her wrist. She looked up through tears to see Sheldon grasping her and Leonard him, and then Penny and the others in a human chain.

The storm ended as suddenly as it had began earlier that day and the seven friends found themselves lying together gasping, exhausted and relieved, in a few inches of water as the stars shone out in the now cloudless sky. As they picked themselves up and hugged and cried, they could hear in the distance the sound of rescue helicopters drawing closer to their position.

* * *

They were taken by helicopter to the island from which they had set out earlier that day and ushered aboard the military transports that would take them to the mainland. Once there, the group that included Leonard, Penny, Raj, Amy, Howard and Bernadette were re-united with Sheldon and the ship's crew who had been ferried in on a second plane. Each of them were to be questioned extensively about strange anomalous weather, radar readings and satellite images that had been observed in the area they had been shipwrecked. They had all agreed to take their knowledge of what had occurred that night to their graves. With the loss of the journals and the talisman there was no real tangible evidence of the lost city or it's malevolent occupant and it was very doubtful that the truth about the night's events would be believed. There were some things that were better left buried in the primordial past and this was one secret even Sheldon could keep if he didn't want his sanity questioned yet again.

**A/N; Just a note on translation for the curious. According to the Lovecraft wiki, the incantation Sheldon recites in chapter 9 translates as "In this house of R'lyeh dead (or dread) C'thulhu waits dreaming."**


End file.
